Haven From Hell (Book 4): Alcazar Prison, page 12
part #4 of Haven From Hell Series
I had Polly cut down a couple of short saplings and dressed them with my cloak, and I motioned the others to add their shirts to the cause. Polly was not happy. She’d just been thrown twice and then used as an axe. She hates that. Enough of my newfound friends understood my intention well enough to contribute their own efforts. Once we had a functional stretcher to put our injured man on, things went much more rapidly, though we still were in no danger of breaking any land speed records.
I could still hear the gunshots ringing out behind us, and had to assume that the enemy were continuing to engage all the zombies which I’d made just for them. My estimation was that they were probably done screwing around for the night, and would wait until dawn before searching the area and clearing it of threats. That gave us the whole night to make a good escape, but I’d have to put my exploding, burning, slaughtering idea on pause until I could return some other time. On the other hand, I didn’t want to risk any of those murdering brigands coming upon Blue and stealing all my bombs and stuff (not to mention Ginger and Mary Ann). Also, a vehicle of some sort would prove convenient for transporting my new wounded friend.
I led my friends around to the south and left them by the side of the road, hidden of course, to rest. My instructions were for them to wait for my return. If I wasn’t back in three hours then they should travel to the prison and say I sent them.
Then I ran back to Blue, brought her down, dug up my joy makers (that’s my personal code for bombs), and did my best to get everything over to the road. With almost no cover to speak of, I left Blue by the side of the road about fifty yards south of Riverwood’s gate (maybe the only gate, maybe not, I didn’t know). I knew I was hurrying my plan but I was running out of options. I ordered Tracer to stay with my bike.
With a big backpack full of homemade low explosives all ready to go, I snuck through the treeline to the perimeter of town and took a gander. It looked to me like the whole neighborhood was awake and listening to a stump speech. I could just about hear some guy barking out what passed for his thoughts, but he was too far away for me to make out the words.
The woods came close enough to the fence that I was able to pretty much just walk right up to it and climb over without anyone the wiser. I only saw one guard and he was looking into town, paying attention to his yelling boss. From there I made my way along the street and into the various driveways, moving silently and from cover to cover. Everyone seemed distracted by that same blowhard, intent on his message, so my passage was about as easy as I could hope for.
By then I was close enough to the big mouth that I could catch the gist of his speech. “…The law of the jungle…when I find out who did this, Bloody will smash their skulls and break their bones… there will be no mercy…the law of the jungle…if they stand up then we’ll smash them right back down…we don’t take no *$%^&* from nobody…the law of the jungle…who do they think they are…teach those *$%^&* a lesson…Bloody is getting thirsty…we have the right to everything we can take…the law of the jungle…” He sure seemed upset about something. I was guessing that was the Reagan fellow I’d heard about, but I didn’t have the time to go running off assassinating him. Sniping him during his speech would have been funny, but I hadn’t brought Ginger and my plate was already pretty full for the night. Maybe if I had time I’d kill him later.
While he was droning on and on, I was busy setting up all my little bombs with their attached kitchen timers. Once I ran out of bombs, I hot wired a likely looking pickup truck (the brigands seemed to have a predilection for that design) and drove it toward the town gate, located on the south wall. The fence was recently made but not well made, it gave me the impression of being the result of forced labor without a decent foreman. Just to be on the safe side, I got out and removed the gate’s crossbar before I plowed through, gunning the engine and honking my horn.
I made excellent time to retrieve Tracer and Blue and then hurried on to pick up all my new friends a little farther south. We had a little trouble with the guy with the broken legs, but he was so messed up by then that he mostly just passed out when we put him in the truck bed.
Once we were well on our way I saw some lights on the highway behind me and knew that we were finally being followed. I’d kept my own lights off and kept my speed down earlier, but as soon as I checked my watch the thrill of the chase overcame my good sense, and I began to speed up, turning on my lights, and honking my horn. I got my big official looking walkie talkie out and asked the woman riding shotgun to scan through the channels.
She asked me, “What are you doing? They’ll catch us!” I hate it when people try and tell me how to drive. I can honk my horn if I want to.
What I said was, “Don’t even worry about it, I got this. It’s all part of my master plan.” Actually, I had been working on a plan, but what I was doing wasn’t it.
She kept channel surfing while I picked up speed, endeavoring to lead a merry chase. Finally, she found the channel everybody was using. They were all busy shouting with each other about where I was and where I would be; everybody was looking to try and cut me off. It was fun. Then I took the radio back from her and tried to open an amusing line of dialogue.
“This is Judge Gideon Storm. I would converse with the one called ‘Reagan’ if he can spare the time.” I had to repeat myself a couple of times before the message got through, but eventually there came a reply.
“This is Reagan, who are you?”
I thought I’d just told everyone that. I put on my best Darth Vader voice and said, “Are you so poor in spirit that you cannot afford to pay attention? This is Judge Gideon Storm, and you stand judged before the living God. You have ‘sown the wind’, and as surly as the Lord lives you shall ‘reap the whirlwind’; for in accordance with Divine Mandate, He will call down the fire of heaven upon you. Call your men back or they shall face flaming ruin. This is your only warning.”
Reagan replied, “You’re a dead man, do you hear me? I don’t know what you were thinking, but when I get my hands on you I’m going to make you wish you were dead. My people own these roads and they’re closing in on you, so just keep calling on your piece of *$%^&* god, you piece of *$%^&* and see how far it gets you. If you had half a brain you’d fear me! When I have all your ways blocked off, then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand? In this world I am god.”
Wow. Big head much, was what I thought. What I said was, “I cannot fear thee, nor any man, for I have received this word from the Lord: ‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.’”
He laughed to hear that, “I’m gonna shove Bloody right up your ass you piece of *$%^&*.”
I replied, “Hearken to the word of the Lord which I have received: ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.’”
It was tough to get the timing right but I managed it. I figured that most of Reagan’s trucks and cars were probably out following me one way or another. That’s when all the bombs detonated. I must have planted eighty explosives, all set to go off at the same time. It was glorious. One moment all was darkness with only our headlights and the moon’s dim luminescence to reveal the nightscape, the next eighty gas tanks exploded simultaneously (well, almost simultaneously). The fiery wrecks were littering the highway behind us, and I could see dozens more burning off in the distance.
It’s surprising how small a bomb has to be if one knows how to set it in the right place.
I took up the radio again, “I am your ‘terror by night,’ and I’ll be seeing you soon, Reagan.” Actually, I had hoped that I’d just killed him with a bomb. The taunt was to see if he was still kicking. Unfortunately, he did reply, and with a string of unimaginative vulgarities. I turned the radio off.
Feeling that it was time for a round of introductions, I turned to the passenger seat, and putting on my most disarming smile, began, “Hi, I’m Gideon. What’s your name?”
The woman next to me had been the one with all the last words in the woods, and her name was Jill. She was pretty old, about forty or sixty, but I could tell she was a fighter. I made a point to remember to get a better weapon for her than a piece of bent firewood. The wounded man’s name was Ellis and the two back there in the truck bed with him were Billie and Leo. Just behind Jill, Tracer, and I were Erin and Darla in the back seat. We got to know each other on the drive back.
I asked them all about life in Riverwood. It was about as bad as I’d expected, but not as bad as some brigands treat their prisoners. The original population were all basically slaves, used for any imaginable purpose. Any who showed some spine got to watch their family get tortured to death in various imaginative ways. One favorite pastime for Reagan was to hold a lottery, the ‘winners’ of which were tossed into the woods at night and hunted. Just to make it fun the boss man would break one of their number’s legs just to see how long it would be before the rest would abandon him (or her).
They asked me all about everything. I stuck to the highlights. I did find it curious to learn that all the folks in Riverwood knew to call zombies ‘zombies’. Apparently the people of New Orleans had coined the term all on their own, and the brigands had taken that little bit of wisdom with them when they’d fled. I wondered if my contact in Haven, Mark, had got the idea for the designation from them or come up with it on his own. Sometime I’d have to ask him (but not too soon).
We made it back home without any more trouble and I was able to get everybody situated in his or her own cell. People had begun to put up drapes and curtains as dividers in the cells for a bit of privacy. Some of them looked pretty nice. Ellis got a spot in the infirmary so Cynthia could put him in a couple of casts. I got to be the first to sign them.
By that time I told everybody to get ready for an attack and Tracer and I took a much needed nap. After listening to that Reagan fellow go on and on like he did, I figured him for the type to strike back as hard and fast as possible. It’s a common strategic failing, the idea that if only one attacks immediately, surely the enemy won’t be ready for it. And Reagan seemed a simple sort.
Also, even Reagan with his mild intelligence would figure out we were responsible for all his most recent woes. Consider: he sends an attack force one day and no one comes back; that night he gets assaulted during play time and loses a bunch of people. His cars, full of soldiers, get blown up shortly thereafter. Assuming a dawn engagement seemed like a no-brainer.
If it had been me, I would have set up a siege using mortars or some such, which was why I intended to start the next fight hiding in the woods. Besides, with all the traps I’d set up I really wanted to watch them work. That kind of thing is way more satisfying up close.
I did spend an hour or two before sunup using that brigand zombie head I’d taken. A while back I knew a girl who had been shot through a zombie’s body, and although the wound was safely treated, the infection of it came close to killing her (or maybe even Changing her, but I don’t think so). My plan was to coat a bunch of the nail traps with zombie goo and see how much fun that might be.
Chapter 9
The Earth turned its course and with the rising dawn came our enemies predictable advance. Numerous cars and vans began spilling onto the prison’s access road, though I did note a distinct lack of pickup trucks. Yet more vehicles had clogged the main road with a true army, or at least a mob, of killers. I was glad that I’d left Tracer behind and indoors; with all the lead that was about to be flying around I didn’t want to risk him getting shot.
By listening in on their communications I was able to overhear the enemies projected course of action, which I was able to confirm by peering out from my hidey-hole. I took Reagan’s free use of straightforward radio communication as further evidence that underestimating him was going to prove to be quite a chore. What a dope. Meanwhile, my friends and I were using our own simple code to describe our own movements and to indicate to one another the where and when of all Reagan’s forces. We were prepared.
My first course of action was to see if I could get a shot off at the enemy leader, but that was a no go. Whether coward or wise, Reagan was holding his position in one of the vans, and I couldn’t tell which one. All I could tell from the enemy chatter was that he was issuing orders from the ‘command van’.
Since I couldn’t cut the head off the snake, I decided to try for the next best thing and opened fire on anyone who looked to be in charge. After Mary Ann put a couple of bullets in the places where they would do the most good, I began to take an amazing amount of fire. It was awesome. Wood splinters and tree limbs falling and flying all over the place, the earth getting torn up by fully automatic fire, the screams of the enemy as the zombies I’d made began to tear into them, and finally, the shouts to advance on my location. When the joy of killing is the order of the day, I do love a noisy adversary.
I retreated past a dense number of traps which I’d set previously. When they began to explode I almost dropped Mary Ann I laughed so hard. Getting ahold of my emotions, I took up a secondary position and began to return fire. In the woods, and with all the shooting going on and explosions happening, my location had once again become a mystery (I liked to think of it as a sort of murder mystery).
My shooting kills had a tendency to transform the enemy from living enemies into dead ones, which further confounded the enemy advance. I retained enough memory of my training to realize that the enemy’s next move would be to begin a flanking maneuver, and that I’d need to run to avoid it. By moving southwesterly I managed to draw the enemy into the open space between the fence and the trees, an excellent killing field. When the enemy fell back from that death zone I was given enough time to pick off a few more of them.
Altogether, we must have dug thousands of single scoop pits all around the prison. Add a piece of wood with a big nail through it, smear on a little pap, and cover with leaves. Then listen for the sweet sound of surprised injury. In a fight like the one I was in, a wounded enemy was just as good as a dead one. Especially if the rusty nail wound gets infected, and the clumsy slob ends up dead in a few days, anyhow.
I had the undiluted joy of watching a number of the enemy set a foot straight down on a nail. It was one of the funniest things I ever did see, it just never got old. I especially enjoyed luring my overly enthusiastic pursuers into clusters of such pointed happiness and listening to all the resultant surprised hollering. Then some of them would need to retreat, usually with some help, and I found that to be a super amusing time for a counterattack.
Eventually, though, I did have to pull back all the way. I couldn’t get into the prison without getting shot in the back, but I was able to retreat farther westward. Any who followed me wouldn’t be in a position to attack the prison, so I was happy with that. From that point on I got involved in a game of hide-and-go-seek with everyone in the enemies back ranks. That was my absolute favorite game growing up (even more fun than ‘gunslinger’, ‘or who-am-I?’), Uncle had always made it a top priority.
I brought down a few of the enemy here and there as I first made my way south and then back around to the east. I had given all those pursuing me the slip and was intent on working my way around to the cars our enemies had arrived in. I thought that with any luck I just might possibly get an opportunity to kill Reagan. I knew he was hiding in one of the vans so that seemed like a good place to start.
As I watched the line of cars parked up and down the main street, I got out my radio and tuned to the enemy’s frequency. Adopting Reagan’s voice as best as I was able I started calling out super optimistic attack strategies, such as: “We’ve taken the southern fence! Everybody charge! Get out there and fight or face the wrath of Bloody!” or, “Get those boards over the water at the gate and ram your way through!”
Once Reagan figured out what I was doing he tried to yell warnings and utter counter commands, so I called out, “Fall back! Fall back! They have reinforcements from the north! Get out of there!” Then I started screaming over the radio stuff like, “No! No! No! Please! Pleeese! Aghhhhhh!” and, “There killing us! Everybody run! God help me! Oh please God, noooooo!” Mostly I just wanted to deprive them of the ability to communicate intelligibly by tying up their channel. I did do a little checking on my other walkie talkie but they only seemed inclined to stick with the one frequency.
They finally ran away. I stayed well hidden and bided my time, hoping for the best. Once they all got in their cars and began pulling away I started shooting drivers, causing a number of wrecks and pileups. The vans were my primary targets, and I was eventually rewarded when one of them crashed and a man got out, calling for a pickup. I recognized the voice as belonging to Reagan.
The range was about three hundred yards, which was a bit farther than Mary Ann was comfortable with, but she did her best. Together we managed to shoot the walkie talkie in his hand and part Reagan’s hair for him, then send him running like a scorched cat, in a state of total and ignominious defeat. At a range of four hundred yards he finally caught a ride, and I had to give it up as a bad job, before getting back to aiming at the fleeing drivers who were a bit closer.
I got back on the radio, and still using Reagan’s voice, uttered, “You cowards have failed me. When we get back to Riverwood there will be a reckoning,” just in case I could lower morale a bit as a parting shot.
After I was sure Reagan’s band of idiots were out of radio range, I called Lisa and told her that I was coming in and not to shoot me. On the way up to the gate I noticed that there was a nice grouping of head shot zombies littering the driveway to the parking lot, and that someone had actually put down a couple of boards, driven over the moat, and then straight into the prison’s front gates. Of course, that sort of thing doesn’t work like in the movies. There’s a world of difference between driving through some crappy made wooden fence door with its bar removed, and driving into a professionally constructed and locked steel prison gate. Depending on the vehicles safety features you might even say it’s the difference between life and death. In the old days prisons were actually designed to resist that specific kind of intrusion. I was a bit disappointed that no one had been able to force entry. If only they had got through the gate then they would have driven right into my especially dug anti-vehicle trap. Oh well, maybe next time.
